“And now take down the following important remark: the artist in me has been given the upper hand over the gentleman” (71). What does Lolita have to say about the morality of art?
The most prominent feature of Lolita is its use of harmonizing language throughout the entire novel. Humbert Humbert's stunning, intricate, and appealing prose is what makes Lolita so remarkable. Nabokov does not hesitate to show off his linguistic abilities, plunging into the first page with attractive vocabulary providing the reader with "aesthetic bliss." Which we can confidently say he successfully achieved. Humbert's use of enchanting language serves as a manipulation technique to facade his gruesome story of rape, pedophilia, incest and murder to something of attraction. This paradox suggests that the beauty of art can mask even the most immoral things.
Word play
A true fan of word play will undoubtedly appreciate this novel, having almost as much fun reading it as Nabakov had drafting it. There is hardly a page in the novel that does not incorporate a good pun, play on words, or coined term derived from the one and only, linguistic genius, Nabakov himself. Humbert seduces his readers through his romantic language, with his constant wordplay throughout Lolita. Word play is important in Lolita as it diverges the reader’s attention away from the horrible events to focus on the beauty of word choice. Multilingual puns seem to be Nabakov's forte as they express a humorous – yet, sophisticated side to Humbert. For example, the name of the character “Humbert” is a pun in two languages. In French it means “Shadow” and in Spanish it means “man”. Similarly, “Lolita” changing her name to “Dolores” which means pain in Latin and her nick name “Dolly” r...
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... mind. In attempt to tug at the audiences heartstrings through his poetic language of love and romance it makes it difficult to look past the beautiful language and see the unraveled events of Lolita in their true light: vulgarity.
In conclusion, by incorporating such rich detail and full imagery through scholarly grammar and vocabulary, Humbert Humbert participates in the act of manipulating his audience through his clever use of wordplay, confrontation, and delusions in order to escape fault for his immoral acts against an innocent girl. Although he is writing a memoir, Humbert does not hold back when it comes to his choice of words. Through his beautiful writing and poetic prose, H.H. is successful in influencing the horror of the true events in Lolita – concluding that through art, beauty can be found even in the most tragic occurrences.
Works Cited
Lolita
Vogel’s writing exudes symbolism from the first word of the script to the last – from the rise of the curtain to its close. The glimpses into Li’l Bit’s past are sometimes explicitly and literally described, but Vogel also often uses extended metaphors to act as a detailed commentary on the action. Why, however, did the playwright choose symbolism to convey the effects of sexual abuse – as heavy as its subject matter may be – during the late twentieth century when seemingly nothing is censored in America? In order to answer this and better understand the way in which Vogel uses symbolism –in the smaller elements of the play and extended metaphors – the terms must first be defined.
In “Nevsky Prospect,” the third person narrator pulls double duty by describing two stories that parallel each other in time. After describing the seemingly harmless bustling avenue, mustaches, and clothing of Nevsky Prospect, the narrator happens to come upon two different characters: an artist and an officer. First, he follows the artist and right away, the narrator seems to be absorbed in the world of the artist. We see this occur when it is often hard to tell when the artist is dreaming or awake. The narrator does not initially make it clear when the artist is dreaming, which can be disorienting for the reader.
The entire novel is a memoir to a court jury that is following Humbert’s case of murder, harassment, and pedophilia. Starting the novel is the poetic line “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins” (Nabokov 9) already dragging the reader in as well as the jury. Calling her the light of his life almost makes the reader feel the strong emotion that Humbert feels for Lolita. The reader understands that he is deeply in love with this girl… (Mulready). Humbert even says that you can “count on a murder for a fancy prose style” (Nabokov), already suggesting that he’s aware in his way of voice and dialect… he is showing
...ror of Pecola’s first sexual experience: her father rapes her), and a difficult marriage situation (caused by his own drunkenness). The “bads” certainly outweigh the “goods” in his situation. Thus, the reader ought not to feel sympathy for Cholly. But, Morrison presents information about Cholly in such a way that mandates sympathy from her reader. This depiction of Cholly as a man of freedom and the victim of awful happenings is wrong because it evokes sympathy for a man who does not deserve it. He deserves the reader’s hate, but Morrison prevents Cholly covered with a blanket of undeserved, inescapable sympathy. Morrison creates undeserved sympathy from the reader using language and her depiction of Cholly acting within the bounds of his character. This ultimately generates a reader who becomes soft on crime and led by emotions manipulated by the authority of text.
Through this sympathetic faculty, a writer is able to give flesh, authenticity and a genuine perspective to the imagined. It is only in this manner that the goal of creating living beings may be realized. Anything short of this becomes an exercise in image and in Kundera’s words, produces an immoral novel (3). The antithesis of liv... ...
Psychoanalysis is the method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts (“Psychoanalysis”). This transfers to analyzing writing in order to obtain a meaning behind the text. There are two types of people who read stories and articles. The first type attempts to understand the plot or topic while the second type reads to understand the meaning behind the text. Baldick is the second type who analyzes everything. Since his article, “Allure, Authority and Psychoanalysis” discusses the meaning behind everything that happens in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” we can also examine “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” in the same manner.
Vladimir Nabokov suffered a neurological disorder called Synthesia. In this disorder, some senses appear the form of other senses. For his specific case, it allowed him to see letters in color. The literary form of this disorder is writing when one sense describes another. Nabokov’s synthesia allowed for him to compose its’ literary form in a superior manner. Additionally, in its literary implication, synthesia generates juxtapositions of the senses. With and in juxtaposition, he uses the comparison of senses to describe one sense through another sense. Nabokov uses his Synthesia to enhance juxtapositions in order to capture essence of life through words. In his short story First Love, he illustrates importance of using the senses in descriptions
Clarice Lispector, a Brazilian female writer of Jewish descent, tied her writing with her very life, for her writing reflects her viewpoint on many aspects of her life. She was well-known for her existentialist writing involving themes revolving around women’s roles. Through the characters and their interactions in her works, Lispector explores the societal status of women. The male subjugation of women influences many of the themes found in her works and a better understanding of women’s social status ultimately leads to a better understanding of the relationship between the characters in her works and actions by those characters. Thus, the evaluation of women in the society contemporary to the era Lispector lived in influences the overall existentialist ideas and the motif of women’s roles in her work.
With his 1955 novel Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov invents a narrator by the name of Humbert Humbert who is both an exquisite wordsmith and an obsessive pedophile. The novel serves as the canvas upon which Humbert Humbert will paint a story of love, lust, and death for the reader. His confession is beautiful and worthy of artistic appreciation, so the fact that it centers on the subject of pedophilia leaves the reader conflicted by the close of the novel. Humbert Humbert frequently identifies himself as an artist and with his confession he hopes “to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets” (Nabokov, Lolita 134). Immortalizing the fleeting beauty and enchanting qualities of these preteen girls is Humbert Humbert’s artistic mission
The language used portrays the characters thoughts and emotions for example she goes into great detail about her surroundings (her life) and the events which had taken place there .She talks about her environment as if she is closely connected with the associations to which she describes.
In the past two centuries, western mainstream cultures have subscribed to the belief that crying is commonly associated with femininity, regardless of one’s gender (Warhol 182). A considerable amount of literature, including Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, has been considered by critics as effectively using “narrative techniques” to make readers cry (Warhol 183). Emphasizing on these matters, Robyn R. Warhol, the author of “Narration Produces Gender: Femininity as Affect and Effect in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple”, analyzes the usefulness of the novel’s narration approaches, focusing on the meaning of Nettie’s letters to Celie and especially the fairy-tale unity in Celie’s last letter. Using The Color Purple as illustrated example, refusing to consider the accounts of gender and sexuality, the author suggests that the applications of culture’s “feminine mythologies” in the novel give readers chances to experience the physical (openly weeping) and emotional (identify self with the character) effects of femininity (Warhol 186). Although Warhol’s interpretations have successfully carried out the novel’s sentimentality within the context of culture and other novels, there is still a general lack of comprehensive examples that illustrated after each of her arguments. In order to corroborate and extend on Warhol’s central argument, the surprising factors of the novel’s ending combines with the elements of foreshadowing in Celie’s first confrontation with Albert about Nettie’s letters, Celie’s relationship with Shug, and the ugly truths about racism and sexism showing through Nettie’s and Celie’s letters should be considered as significant in creating the novel’s sentimentality.
Flaubert’s realism and Allende’s magic realism techniques allow the authors to both create and destroy suspense in order to mirror their respective attitudes towards fate. In Madame Bovary, Flaubert consistently builds anticipation with the extreme detail common to the realist genre. After building up the suspense to an almost unbearable intensity, he ends the section with a flat statement that destroys any suspense in an ultimately anticlimactic way. These endings frustrate the reader, but also mirror Emma’s journey and her romantic ideals. Flaubert parallels the plot and its implications on the idea of fate with detail. Emma and Leon, when first flirting, go to the house of the nurse for Berthe, but Flaubert describes the hedges on the way there in excruciating detail: “They were in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles...
The development of semiotics in the 20th century revealed much about ideology in mass culture. Structuralist Roland Barthes' texts on the matter are very much products of their times, yet many still have a troubling modern-day relevance. Barthes' Mythologies demonstrates the possibilty to find meaning through the 'trivia' of everyday life. He claims to want to challenge the 'innoncence' and 'naturalness' of cultural texts and practices, as they are capable of producing a multitude of supplementary meanings, or 'connotations'.
... is romantic and at ease, but he turns brisk and honest as time disintegrates. This image becomes crystal clear with words and phrases such as, "heart", "beauty", "youthful hue sits on thy skin", "our sweetness", "virginity", "breast", and "pleasures". All of these words provide the reader with an illustration of the man's desires. The use of imagery permits the author to fully describe the necessity of time, and allows the reader to visualize the thoughts and feelings that the characters experience.
In the story of Alice in Wonderland we follow Alice down a rabbit hole into a land of pure wonder, where the logic of a little girl holds no sway. In Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, we witness exactly the opposite as Emma Bovary, a most romantic creature, is purposely cast into a harshly realistic world. In either case, a creature is put into an environment unnatural to her disposition, yet in Flaubert’s example, Emma shares the world we inhabit, and thus the message her story brings is much more pertinent. To convey this message, Flaubert replicates not a world of fantasy, but rather the real world, with all its joy, sadness, and occasional monotony intact. Then he proceeds to dump an exaggeratedly sentimental woman, Bovary, with the training, appearance, and expectations of an heiress, into the common mire and leave her there to flounder in the reality of middle class life as a farmer’s daughter. From Madame Bovary’s reactions within this realistic situation, and from the novel’s outcome, a message is rendered concerning romanticism itself, and its misplacement in a cacophonous and uncomplimentary world.